Using stress wave technology for leakage detection in a landfill impervious layer

Abstract

This paper proposes a stress wave monitoring method for monitoring and locating leakage through the impervious layer at a landfill to resolve the “first pollution, then discovery” problem caused by the existing electrical monitoring method. The experimental results show that the linear distance to the geophones from the leak point should be less than 31.5 m to provide a well-defined rupture signal. The amplitudes of the stress wave signals generated during the yield and rupture stages of the high-density polyethylene (HDPE) film are more obvious and easily identified by the geophones; the rupture signal duration is approximately 100 ms, and the bandwidth is distributed within 0 kHz to 1 kHz. By studying the stress wave first arrival times calculated by the picking model, the average error of the picking model is approximately 0.35 ms, and the iteration of the model is ceased when the thresholds of the discriminating indices are 3.5 and 0.9. Experiments reveal that the positioning model should stop iterating when the absolute value of each element in the calibration vector is less than 140. The average positioning error is 0.248 m, and the maximum fiducial errors of the positioning model in the X-axis and Y-axis directions are 0.32% and 0.58%, respectively.